The Beginning
by Dana Holmes
Summary: Prequel to ABI. Harry's dreams about Voldemort begin immediately after the war.


Title: The Beginning  
Author: Dragon_of_Venus  
Pairing: Harry Potter/Voldemort  
Rating: NC-17  
Word Count: 6,641  
Master:  
Summary: Prequal to ABI. Harry's dreams about Voldemort begin immediately after the war.  
Warnings: Explicit sexual content involving two underage boys, minor bloodplay.  
Contains: Oral sex  
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter and all related characters and settings. I do not in any way profit off of Harry Potter trademarks.  
Authors Note: This one came out a little longer than the other two, but... meh. I don't really want to shorten it.

The bastard nearly _tripped_ over him. Harry was the one who almost had a fucking fifth year land on him because the bastard couldn't be arsed to look where he was stepping, but _Voldemort_ seemed to interpret it as some gross insult that Harry had the nerve to be unconscious where Voldemort wanted to put his feet. Voldemort would, Harry supposed. Harry woke up just on time to see Voldemort barely catch his balance, then whirl around and kick Harry _hard_ in the ribs.

Harry rolled onto his other side and thought of Dudley as he waited for the pain to fade. Oh, but what he wouldn't _give_ to be locked in a dirty bathroom with Dudley instead. Anyone but Voldemort.

Voldemort let out a barely audible noise that might have been a pout of indignation or _might_ have been a whimper. "It's you...?" he said.

Harry rolled over to face him.

"It's you." He sounded much more sure of the fact this time.

Harry sat up. He knew this place well enough. To his left was the open Chamber of Secrets and to his right, just behind Voldemort, was Moaning Myrtle. She was unusually quiet, and unusually still, and unusually solid. Her body was crumpled at the foot of the toilet in a rather strange way, with her upper torso pressed between the low stall wall and the toilet itself.

"I don't much like this," Voldemort confessed. And he _didn't_ look his best. His breath was short, his eyes were wide, his face was flushed... He actually looked a little bit frightened.

Harry shrugged. "You certainly aren't the person _I_ was hoping to wake up with, either."

Voldemort leered. "Who were you hoping to wake up with?"

"Fuck you," Harry said, standing up. He looked around the bathroom slowly and took some deep breaths to suppress his own rising panic. After a moment of debate about whether it would be better to keep his eyes on Voldemort or the open Chamber entrance, in case the basilisk decided to make an appearance, he settled his gaze on Voldemort.

Voldemort's eyes flicked quickly away from his. Voldemort turned around and became suddenly extremely interested in Myrtle's dead body.

"Who am I?" Harry asked.

"You don't know?" Voldemort said, not taking his eyes off the corpse in the stall.

"I want to know if _you_ know." It didn't seem likely that he'd been sent back in time. Voldemort _did_ seem to recognize him, and that was absolutely impossible if he'd been sent back in time. Voldemort never knew Harry. _Voldemort_ knew Harry. Still, it was best to ask.

Voldemort shrugged. "You're Harry Potter."

Harry nodded, more to himself than to Voldemort. "When was the last time you saw me?"

Voldemort sucked in a quick breath as though to answer, but nothing came of it. He took another step closer to the corpse and he crossed his arms tightly. "... I've never met you."

_That_ answer surprised Harry a bit. "But you know who I am?"

Voldemort shrugged. "... I know some things about you... Something about your parents in Godric's Hollow and a battle at Hogwarts? But there's never been a battle at Hogwarts..." He took a deep breath, then laughed slightly. "I don't know where a silly idea like that might have come from. I have other memories of you, though..." He closed his eyes. "Or maybe they were only dreams... We're in the Chamber... but you're just a kid. A first year, or not much older... There's a dead girl on the floor..." He turned back to face Harry. "Did I kill her?"

"Do you mean—" Harry nodded toward Myrtle's body.

"No. Another dead girl. A red-head. I don't know her."

"Ginny!" Harry said at the exact moment that Voldemort whispered, "Ginny..."

Harry shivered. "You do know her?"

Voldemort's eyebrows creased once again. "Yes? Ginny. Little Ginny who was in love with—with _you_. She wrote in my diary... 'Wrote in my diary'... Wrote to me? Wrote _in_ me?" He laughed. "What does that even _mean_?"

Harry swore. If Voldemort had _any_ idea what was going on, he was damn good at hiding it. (Of course, Harry was _not_putting it past the boy to be damn good at hiding it.) "How did you get here?"

"I walked," Voldemort said.

"From where?"

"Dinner."

"And how did you get to dinner?"

"I _walked_. Are _you_ in the habit of traveling around this school some other way?"

"No," Harry said, "But really, what were you doing immediately before you arrived here?"

"_Dueling you!_" Voldemort said. There was an awkward silence for half a second, then Voldemort's face, followed by the rest of his body, relaxed. "...at dinner... in the Chamber...?" He shut his eyes again and took a deep breath, then opened them and fixed Harry with a hard stare. "What have you done to me?"

"Nothing!" Harry sighed and paced the bathroom floor for a moment. "I was really looking forward to having a night _free_ of you."

Voldemort stepped back and leaned against the stall for support. He sank slowly to the cold tiled floor of the third-floor bathroom. Harry just kept pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, try not to panic, don't look at the body. How long did it take for a ghost to come up? Back and forth, back and forth, there had to be _some_ explanation—

"I'm going to go to bed now," Voldemort said. He stood on shaking knees, took two steps toward the door, and then stopped. He turned around slowly, and looked at Myrtle's body. Harry was unsure if the look of sick horror on Voldemort's face was for him or for her. He knelt down beside her body, grabbed her by the ankles, and drug her out of the stall.

"What are you doing?"

"Well I'm not just going to _leave_ it here for someone to find!"

Harry took a step back, but wasn't sure he should interfere. If you changed things in the past, it could have terrible effects in the future. Harry was not fond of the idea of Myrtle's parents never even getting their daughter's body, but if that was the way it happened... he could safely do nothing but watch.

Voldemort attempted once to pick her up bridal style, but when that didn't go as he'd hoped he dragged her to the edge of the open tunnel, then crawled behind her and pushed her down it. Harry had to look away as her body fell. He was glad that he never heard it hit the botVoldemort.

Voldemort closed the Chamber and moved for the door.

Harry had no time to dwell on Myrtle's death. He swallowed a mouthful of vomit and ran to the door to cut Voldemort off. He was _damned_ if he was going to just passively wait there in 1940something for Voldemort to attack him. "What do you remember?" he said, raising his voice just slightly.

"Many things," Voldemort said, "None of them particularly pleasant. Let me through."

"Tell me in detail how you got here."

Voldemort actually looked to be considering that for a moment.

"Crucio!"

Nothing happened. For a moment Voldemort looked at his wand as though it were defective, and then he smiled slightly and shook his head. "You learn as you go with these things. That's the trouble with traveling uncharted magical territory. Please move, Harry. I would like to go to bed."

"And where am I supposed to go?"

Voldemort shrugged. "Hell?"

"It looked a moment ago like you'd have a bit of trouble sending me there."

"There's more than one way to get to Hell, Potter. _Find one_, if you're feeling so very kind. If you're not feeling so kind, go to the Gryffindor Common Room, or go to the library, or go _anywhere else_, but let. me. pass. You aren't welcome where I'm going."

"The Slytherin Common Room? Why not? I've been there once before... or once later." Harry shrugged and held the door open for Voldemort, feeling rather smug about the look of protective fury on Voldemort's face. "Perhaps we can walk together, and if _you're_ feeling so kind, you'll tell me what you've done to us on the way."

"I've done _nothing_ to us," Voldemort said, leading the way. "You won that last duel. I should think that whatever came about as a result of it was _your_ doing."

Harry sighed. "_Alright_. If this _was_ my doing, how exactly did I do it and how can we _un_do it?"

"Not for the first time in my life, Potter, I have absolutely no idea how an incompetent brat such as yourself has managed to break several of the _fundamental laws_ of magic."

"Then... what you're saying is... we're stuck here?"

Voldemort froze. He shut his eyes and his brow creased, but his mouth was set in an unwavering straight line. Ten seconds went by, then he took he a deep breath, like someone in the middle of a meditation, and let it out and smiled at Harry. "_I'm_ quite comfortable here. And indeed a not-insignificant part of me feels like this is exactly where he belongs and the only place in the world he particularly wants to be. Perhaps _you're_ stuck, but there are worse places to be stuck—Oi! Curfew! Get to your common rooms!" He'd looked over Harry's shoulder to say the last bit. Harry turned and found two kids—fourth years or so—leaning against the wall down the hall.

"Didn't you hear me?" Voldemort said, moving toward them. "I _am_ the Slytherin prefect and it won't end well for you if you..."

Harry caught up to Voldemort, and his first thought was Hermione, lying on a hospital wing bed that horrible spring of their second year, her body bent in uncomfortable ways she couldn't move out of and her eyes wide and unblinking. There was that same terrible coldness about the couple against the wall, even though they were frozen in mid-laugh.

"Did—"

"No," Voldemort said.

Harry was a bit offended, and he let it show.

"I know what you were going to ask," Voldemort said, "And no. Nüwa didn't do this. How could she have?"

Harry didn't have an answer. Neither of the children were wearing glasses. Harry could see nothing that the basilisk's eyes might have reflected off of, and the upon closer inspection the girl even had her eyes closed.

Voldemort took a careful step back. "L-let's just get to the common room now, shall we?"

Harry nodded and tried to look calm as he followed Voldemort, but he could hear his own heartbeat. This was bad. He was trapped half a century in the past. People were petrified. People were petrified _and it wasn't the Heir of Slytherin's fault_. Voldemort's magic at least wasn't working. The only person _in the world_ who had any idea who he was was Voldemort. He didn't know how he'd got here. He didn't know how he could get back. He'd just volunteered himself to sleep in the Slytherin Common Room.

"What _exactly_ do you remem—"

"_Everything_, Potter!" Voldemort glared at him. "Including things I _didn't_ remember before. Like you _killing_ Nüwa." He said it so harshly that Harry flinched, but Harry did catch himself before he apologized. Voldemort sighed. "I remember dueling you and dying. That is chronologically the latest, but it's by far the least clear. I know it happened, but I can't picture it at all... I remember watching you kill my pet and shove her fang into my horcrux. You're rather young in that one. That's... It's very _clear_, but it's not exactly solid. I can hold an image of it in my mind, but it's like I'm looking at it through a veil... I remember eating dinner with my friends, walking upstairs to open the Chamber, and killing that mudblood... and that's all_very_ clear. I could tell you where my friends were sitting and what they were eating, and it's _vivid_."

"And _all_ of those things feel to you like the last thing you did?"

Voldemort nodded. He took another deep breath, then turned and marched _very_ quickly down to the dungeons. They didn't pass another living soul on their way, but when Harry mentioned this fact Voldemort brushed it off as not unusual. They were out after hours, after all, and Voldemort was a prefect. The few people who were still out would certain hide if they saw him coming.

Voldemort strode confidently into the cellars and up to the back wall. "Grindelwald," he said, without so much as a waiver in his voice.

Absolutely _nothing_ happened.

Voldemort deflated. "_Really_?" He sighed. "_Fuck_. What day is it?"

Harry didn't quite realize that Voldemort was speaking to him for a moment. When he didn't realize it, Voldemort's dark eyebrow crept slightly higher, and Harry had a feeling he'd be writhing under a cruciatus right now if Voldemort could do it.

Harry shrugged. "I don't even know what _month_ it is!"

"It's June," Voldemort said. "It's... let's see... " He shut his eyes. "...dinner... before dinner there was coursework... Dolohov wasn't there to do the coursework, because... because he was at Quidditch practice! _Fuck_, it's Sunday!"

Harry had no idea what was so terrible about Sunday—He rather liked Sundays—but Voldemort looked very harassed.

Voldemort glared at the wall. "Even still, _they are not supposed to change it without me_. They know that. _Fuck_. I could kill them all."

Harry wasn't sure if the last sentence was an empty expression of his anger, a very real threat, or simply a statement of fact, but it seemed best to assume the worst and attempt to defuse the situation. "I don't actually think a blood bath would help anything," Harry said, not relenting at all when Voldemort fixed his glare on _Harry_ instead. "Perhaps we should just find somewhere else to sleep. The Room of Requirements, maybe?"

Voldemort waved him off. "I know where to find a couple of people who'll know the password. This way, then..." Voldemort didn't lead Harry far. They came to a stop outside of a door in the dungeons that Harry had never thought much of, and Voldemort knocked and waited.

And waited.

"I _know_ they're in there!" Voldemort said to the world in general. He grabbed the handle and started to turn it, but then paused and turned to Harry. "You'd best not come in. Slughorn would ask questions."

"No he wouldn't," Harry said.

Voldemort raised an eyebrow. Harry was growing to _really_ hate that eyebrow.

"No more than Slughorn remembers the students who aren't his favorites? He will not ask questions."

Voldemort shrugged and entered the room without a word. He froze suddenly, just inside the door, and Harry ran into him. In a brief fit of anger and frustration, Harry shoved Voldemort hard to the side, and Voldemort spun around and slapped him across the face. Harry took a step backwards...

And the floor fell out from under him, or so it felt.

Harry would have thought they were statues if he hadn't caught Walburga Black's eyes. He didn't recognize _her_, exactly, but the facial features were the same and there was simply no mistaking her eyes, if only because they were so very like Sirius'. They were softer eyes now. Not softer in the sense that Harry was inclined to believe she was a kinder person now, but softer in the way that her great nephew's eyes were always _softer_ when he spoke to Professor Snape than when he spoke to Hermione. She was a horrid person, certainly, but at present she was in the company of people to whom she didn't feel inclined to show that. She was, as a matter of fact, seated on the far right hand-corner of the table, leaning in to have a conversation with a slightly thinner and consider younger Horase Slughorn, who was frozen at the head of the table. Around the two of them were nine other young women, not one of them moving a muscle.

Harry looked at Voldemort. The horrified look on Voldemort's face told him all he needed to know, but Voldemort spoke anyway. "Don't. I _did not_, Harry. I _would_ not..."

Harry wanted to say something, but wasn't quite sure what.

"_Sandwiches_," Voldemort said, and somehow it registered in Harry's mind as an explicative.

"What?"

"I said '_fuck_,' Harry, do you want a sandwich?" Harry opened his eyes. "Kreacher brought some up." Hermione held up the tray as evidence.

Harry sat up _very_ slowly, and looked around the dormitory room.

"Hermione..." he said quietly as relief washed over him.

"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione put down the tray and had her hand on Harry's forehead in under a second.

Harry grabbed it and squeesed it for a second. "Yes, I'm alright. Thank you. I just... I just had a bad dream. That's all." His stomach growled loudly. Hermione brought him the sandwiches and he took one greedily. "What are you doing in here?" he asked her, only after he'd scarfed half of his first sandwich.

Hermione shrugged. "The entire tower's abandoned except for us." _Not too many other people don't have anywhere else to go,_ her eyes said, but her mouth didn't. "It didn't seem to make much sense for us to sleep in different rooms."

Harry nodded. The question was too big to avoid asking forever, so he decided to just get it over wtih. "Your parents—"

"I'm going to wait another week or two," she said quickly. "Just in case... and... and I'm sure that it will take time for things to calm down here in England, and we're all going to be very busy until they do. My parents... being muggles under a memory charm that big for that long, I mean... They're going to need a bit of nursing back to health to make a full recovery. I'm not going to get them until I have the time to care for them."

Harry shook his head. "Hermione," he gave her a hard look, not terribly unlike the one he'd given Remus, "Your family has to come first. Go get them Voldemortorrow. There will be other people to track down the remaining Death Eaters and to rebuild the school and to do whatever else needs to be done. There is no one else to take care of your family."

Hermione nodded, but even in the darkness it looked like she was fighting back tears. Harry wrapped his arms around her, and she sobbed into his filthy, bloody shirt.

"They're going to be so angry..." she whispered. "I just keep thinking that if I were them... how _betrayed_ I'd feel..."

"Shhhh. They'll understand." Harry held her tight. "They'll understand..." They sat there like that for several minutes until Hermione pushed away, clearly done talking about it. They finished eating the sandwiches, and Harry slipped back under his old covers and Hermione crawled beneath Ron's. They both were aware of nothing until they woke up to a sunny dormitory in what felt like a new, and much better, world.

A lot of things happened _very_ quickly over the next four weeks. The very first matter to attend to was Hermione's parents. Harry and Ron went with her for that, for moral support, though they spent most of the ordeal standing there uselessly while Hermione countered spells they'd never heard of and had a tearful reunion with her parents. Hermione thought it would be best for their recovery to bring them back to England, but since they'd sold their old home and vanishing for a year without notice had _thoroughly_ burned the bridges with many of their relatives, she'd brought them to Grimmauld Place. Harry, for his part, was happy for the company, and while Kreacher balked a bit at the idea of serving muggles, he really was as well behaved as Harry had hoped, and he didn't seem to mind the extra people to feed. Hermione's parents had just seemed fascinated by Kreacher. At the end of May they were still saying that they wanted to go back to Australia (to justify leaving for a month without notice, they had taken "emergency medical leave" and without directly _lying_ they had left their staff under the impression that they'd been in a car crash) and Hermione was starting to believe they were well enough to mean it.

Kingsley had told Andromeda about her daughter and son-in-law's deaths. It was traditional for the Minister to speak to the surviving relatives in person when an Auror was killed on the job, and Kingsley had done a lot of that during his first few days in office. Harry had arrived shortly after him to express his condolences and to discuss Teddy's situation, and luckily (as lucky as you can be in such circumstances) they found themselves in perfect agreement. Harry could hardly have handled the responsibilities of the baby, and Andromeda could hardly have handled parting with that baby. Teddy, she'd said, was the only family she had left in the world. Harry'd had no inclination to argue the point.

Harry had done his own fair share of delivering bad news. He'd asked for, and been given, permisison to speak to the families of the Dumbledore's Army members who'd been killed. Those had been some _damn_ hard conversations. Harry would never forget how Dennis had bawled. His parents had even declared that Dennis would never go back to "that school," but Harry had done his best to calm them down and make them rethink that before he'd left. He didn't know if he'd been successful or not.

It seemed like every other day was the day of a funeral. Remus, Tonks, Collin, Fred, Lavander... Snape. _That_ had been a small funeral. Harry had started arranging it just a few days after the battle, to the elation of the press and the great confusion of everyone else. Harry felt like he'd really bombed those interviews (he could see Snape sneering at him from heaven), but he was misquoted so much that he didn't suppose it really mattered. But it was a lucky thing the story broke, in some ways, because Draco (who was free on bail) had stepped forward the day the story hit and offered to help. They'd worked together quite cordially. It had seemed like the least they could do for a man who had done so much for both of them. All told, Harry, Draco, Narcissa, Slughorn, McGonagall, Shacklebolt, and a handfull of Slytherins were the only ones who'd shown up. Harry hadn't expected any better.

There was the matter of the Malfoys. Draco and Narcissa had been released on bail (paid, to Harry's amazement, by Theodore Nott, whose father had died with the Death Eaters in the Battle of Hogwarts), but Lucius was for some reason considered a flight risk while his wife and son weren't, so he'd been detained until the family all had their trials near the end of the month. Draco and Narcissa were completely aquitted (though the former was also rather humiliated), thanks to Harry's testimony, and Lucius was given a slap on the wrist for breaking out of Azkaban the first time. His first sentence was overturned and the time he'd already spent in Azkaban during Harry's sixth year and while awaiting trial after the war was applied to his sentence, so he'd be out in slightly more than three years. In light of the life sentence Lucius had fled and the aditional life sentence he was faced with, that sentence was really much better than the Malfoys had dared to hope for. Harry was having a hard time feeling good about that, though he was very grateful to Narcissa and happy to help get her off, and he genuinely believed that Draco was reformed, or at least reform_ing_. Lucius was still... you don't just forgive the bastard who gave your girlfriend Voldemort's diary.

Reporters were, of course, _constantly_ begging Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny (no one was much interested in Luna, which suited her just fine) for a tell-all interview. The six of them talked it over at length, bringing Luna's father in on the discussion at one point because if they were going to give _anyone_ the story, it was of course going to be _The Quibbler_. Mr. Lovegood had all but made the decision for them when he discouraged them from going to the media, even in his own magazine, with their story. In order to do it _well_, it would have to be much too long and it would tell the Death Eaters much too much. So, ultimately, there was just one thing published on the matter: A very eloquent Letter to the Editor of every major media outlet, explaining exactly why their lips were going to be tightly sealed on the matter for a _very_long time. Hermione and Ginny made a few off-hand comments to each other about maybe writing a book about it _one day_, but they kept those discussions within the group.

Harry spent whatever spare time he had helping Professor McGonagall fix up the school. The way it had looked in the direct aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts was _heartbreaking_. Harry couldn't help but do all in his power to fix it. It was already looking much better at the end of the month. It probably wouldn't be completely repaired by the end of the summer, but Professor McGonagall had told Harry that she was certain that by the end of the summer they _would_ have it well enough repared that they'd be able to just lock off the corridors that still weren't ready, move a few classes to new rooms, and reopen in September.

That had not been exactly what Harry had wanted to hear. He'd wanted McGonagall to tell him that it was going to be another year or two, so he should just put any idea of coming back out of his mind. Now that the possiblity of returning had been spoken, Harry felt... Harry didn't know how to feel. He, Hermione, and Ron had a very long chat. As loath as they were to part with each other, even if only for a year, in the end they all had very different plans. Ron, who had never felt a stronger family bond than in the days since his brohter's death, had decided to help George out with the shop for a few months. For Hermione, there had never been any question as to whether or not she was going back to school. Harry... Harry _loved_ Hogwarts more than he imagined he could ever love any other place in the world, but he couldn't do it. He was as ready to leave it behind now as he was ever going to be. Going back for another year wouldn't make his transition into the adult world easier, it would make it harder. He joked that he'd caused it enough trouble to last it a lifetime. Since the offer had been made, he was just going to enter Auror training.

With that decision made, he and Ginny had... sort of kept their distance from each other. They'd talked first. A lot. They'd ultimately decided that it really was not the best of times for either of them to be rushing back into a relationship that they knew was going to be long-distance in a few months anyway. Things needed to be over between them; No obligations to each other, no thoughts of getting back together until Harry was out of Auror training. They would be friends again, and not a thing more. They both _needed_ that.

And so, when Harry flopped into bed on May 31st and kicked his shoes off, it was not Voldemort who was on his mind. It was Ginny. It was Lucius. It was Snape. It was Teddy. It was Dennis. There were _dozens_ of people on Harry's mind, but Voldemort was not one of them.

So he was rather displeased when he opened his eyes a second later to find himself once again on the floor of a girls lavatory.

His anger was assauged somewhat when he realized he was alone with Myrtles body. It was right back in its awkward position in the stall. Harry wondered where his subconcious would have got the idea that it looked like that. Myrtle hadn't told him about her death in that level of detail.

Harry moved toward the Chamber. Why not? The world around them was frozen and Voldemort couldn't hurt him. He didn't really know what to do other than to let the dream run its course, and he might as well find Voldemort rather than wait for something unfamiliar to pop out at him. He went down through the tunnel, the corridor, and at long last came to the Chamber. For want of any better plan, he kept right on walking until he was at the mouth of the statue in which the basilisk slept.

With either the right sense of humor or a very wrong sense of aesthetics, what Harry found in the mouth of that statue might have been heart-warming. The basilisk was curled into a tight coil which kept its eyes in a safe position where there was no chance of accidentally looking into them, and on top of the basilisk, almost cuddling it, was Voldemort. It would have been incredibly disturbing from the body that Harry had dueled against, but the handsom body of sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle _almost_ made the scene cute.

Harry went up to Riddle and nudged him slightly.

"Hm?" But Riddle said no more, and he didn't move.

Harry shoved him. He _moaned_.

Harry sighed. He'd committed. "Wake up!" he said, shoving Riddle again.

Riddle rolled over and caught Harry's wrist. "Wasn't sleeping," he said.

"Let go of me."

"Come up here."

"What _were_ you doing?"

"Just lying here," Voldemort said, batting sweet brown eyes at Harry like Harry was one of his naive professors. "Thinking. Feeling a little lonely, actually. Come up here."

"Let go of me!"

To his surprise, Voldemort actually did.

Harry looked from Voldemort to the basilisk. "It looked to me like you had pretty good company."

"Nüwa?" He sighed. "She's as bad as Slughorn and the girls. I haven't once been able to get her to move or speak or anything." He patted the scales next to him. "It's just... well, me, me, and me, if you know what I mean, and all three of us are actually rather glad to see you."

It looked like it was about as comfortable a seat as any. Harry climbed up and, after a solid minute of very _carefully_ finding his balance, settled comfortably next to Voldemort.

Voldemort smiled slightly, then caressed from the base of Harry's middle finger to the croc of Harry's elbow.

"What are you doing?"

"It feels... weird, doesn't it?" He did it again.

It _did_ feel... weird. It was this sort of _tinging_ that Harry had noticed when Voldemort slapped him, but he hadn't paid much attention to it.

"How long as it been since the last time you were here?" Voldemort said.

"A month," Harry said.

"A month..." Voldemort shook his head. "I haven't eaten or slept in a month, Harry Potter."

"I suppose you don't when you're dead..." Harry said, getting a little bit lost in the pleasure of Voldemort's touches.

"About that, though..." Voldemort very quickly went to work unbuttoning his uniform. Harry worried for a moment where this was going, but Voldemort stopped at opening his shirt. He grabbed the hand he'd been caressing just a moment before and pressed it to his chest.

He had a heartbeat.

Harry smirked despite himself.

"What?" Voldemort said.

"You _do_ have a heart!"

Voldemort laughed. "Previous brief lapses in judgement notwithstanding, I know that Beedle the Bard tales aren't true. You can't cut out your own heart." He shrugged. "It wouldn't have the desired effect, anyway."

"True," Harry said, pulling his hand away. "I guess regular old sociopathy always worked fine for you anyway."

Voldemort ignored him. "The point is, Harry, I'm alive. Legally, at least." He jumped off the basilisk's back. "Come here!"

Harry was curious, and it was only a dream. He followed.

Voldemort lead him around the giant snake, and as he walked he slipped his open robes off and tossed them onto the basilisk's head, covering her eyes. "I don't know if she'd actually harm you like this," Voldemort said over his shoulder, "But why risk it?"

Harry agreed.

There was very little space between the basilisk's massive body and the wall. Harry wondered exactly what Voldemort was playing at. There was nothing in the area, save a couple of banners and a sword mounted on the wall.

Voldemort stood aside and motioned for Harry to go ahead of him when the basilisk's curled up body got so close to the wall that there was only room for one of them to walk.

Harry held back for a moment. "What are you doing?"

"I just want to show you something. Go ahead." He nodded. "Go get the sword."

Harry snorted and held his ground. There are several phrases one never wants to hear from one's mortal enemy. "Go get the sword," while not one of the trendier ones, was certainly one of them.

Voldemort sighed. "It's a normal sword, Harry."

Harry didn't move. He was not much more interested in a _normal_ sword fight with Voldemort than he was in any of the thousands of magical possibilities.

"_Fine_. Come here." He walked over to the sword himself and raised a hand. "I _was_ going to let you do this to me yourself, but if you don't want to..." He took a deep breath, then rested his arm against the wall. He carefully positioned it on the blade, which stuck out from the wall by several centimeters, due to the way it was mounted, and with one more deep breath jerked his arm down _hard_. Harry watched as his shirt was slashed open and a thin line of blood appeared, partially covered by the shirt but immediately soaking through.

He held it out to Harry. Harry watched, fascinated and somewhat horrified, as the blood stain on Voldemort's shirt grew and red continued to pour from his arms. He was alive. Voldemort was, in some sense of the word, alive.

"Give me your hand, Harry," he said, offering the hand of his uncut arm.

Harry placed his hand inside of Voldemort's, and Voldemort brought it closer to him and clapped it over his wound. The strange tingling spread once again through Harry's body. "Wait," Voldemort said, when Harry twitched away slightly.

Harry waited. After five seconds, Voldemort lifted Harry's hand.

His arm was healed. His shirt was clean and mended, too.

"That happens every time," Voldemort said.

"Does it hurt?"

"The healing?"

"The cut itself."

"Yes. Very badly."

"And the healing?"

"Not at all. The pain just sort of.. _stops_, all at once."

They were standing very close together now, and Harry noticed that Voldemort's breathing deeped for a second, as though he were sniffing. His eyebrows creased, but he was smiling. "You smell like dirt!"

Harry shrugged and took a step back. "I've been helping the reconstruction effort at Hogwarts."

Voldemort kept smiling. "Oh? I'd have thought it'd be all press confrences and politics for the boy who defeated the Dark Lord."

"Nope," Harry said. "It's been mostly manual labor and funerals."

"Shame..." Voldemort said, but then he quickly changed his tone. "Good though. Good. We need Hogwarts."

Harry turned around and started to walk away.

"What did I say?" Voldemort said.

Harry kept moving.

"Would you like to stick me again? _Really_ stick me with it?"

Harry turned around. Voldemort was still standing by the sword, smirking. As Harry walked back, he pulled the word down from the wall, turned it, and offered it to Harry.

It was much smaller and lighter than the sword of Gryffindor. Harry was glad of that. He felt like he'd be able to aim this one better. He looked expectantly at Voldemort.

"...Nothing vital," Voldemort said. He held out his arm. "Just... just run it through my palm, for the first try."

Harry nodded, and without another word on the matter did just that. Voldemort screamed, and the small bloodsoaked blade had gone straight through Voldemort's hand. Harry pulled it back out and stared at the wound for a few seconds. When he moved his hand over to Voldemort's, he'd meant to heal him, but instead he stuck his finger in the wound.

The magic in the air between them was palpable.

He stuck his finger _through_ the wound.

Voldemort's fingers closed around Harry's hand. Voldemort was clearly trying to speak, but couldn't, and both of their bodies were absolutely _vibrating_ with magical energy. They held still for a long minute, both completely incoherent throughout, before Harry realized that things were a bit out of control and hastily pulled away. Voldemort collapsed against Nagini and balled up his blood fist. He sobbed while Harry panted. Several seconds went by, and then the sobbing stopped. Voldemort showed Harry his palm. There wasn't so much as a lingering bloodstain.

"I wonder..." Voldemort said, "If we could find a less painful way to do that."

"Ideas?" Harry wanted to do that again very, very much. It was all the same to him if Voldemort didn't want to be in pain next time. He didn't know what exactly was happening, but some _itch_ that he'd been trying to scratch for a month now had just been scratched, and wanted more.

"One," Voldemort said, standing up. He walked over to Harry, staring him in the eyes the entire way and not stopping until they were standing toe to toe.

Harry opened his mouth to ask what it was, but before he could make a sound, Voldemort was kissing him.

Harry immediately forgot what he'd even wanted to say. It was the most intense kiss of his life even though Harry _knew_ he should be revolted, and he wanted more. He _needed_ more contact with Voldemort. He reached up and started to jerk the open shirt off of Voldemort's shoulder's, and Voldemort let him do it. Voldemort himself went straight for Harry's trousers. Pulling away was unthinkable. Voldemort unbuttoned and unzipped them and pulled back from the kiss and sank to the floor, pulling Harry's trousers and pants down with him.

He stopped for a second, and looked up at Harry with wide eyes. "Can I?"

"Yes!" Harry didn't even remember the reasons why he might have said no until after he'd said it.

Voldemort's mouth was around his cock a second after he remembered, and he quickly forgot again. Voldemort moaned before Harry did, not from sexual pleasure but from the pleasure of the magical energy surrounding them. The tangible magic, the vibrations, and the sight of Riddle dropping that innocent mask and fixing Harry with a pair of cocky and absolutely _devilish_ brown eyes was almost enough for Harry.

If Voldemort were Ginny, Harry would have felt awkward about letting her pleasure him this way when he knew that even if he tried to repay the favor, he wasn't going to be as good. Voldemort was not Ginny. If Harry was going to feel awkward about anything, it was going to be about the fact that the genocidal maniac he'd killed earlier that month was sucking him off and he had _enthusiastically_ consented.

_Jesus Christ it felt good though._He came hard and Voldemort swallowed expertly. He thought he heard Voldemort laugh, and then—

—His eyes opened. This time, he didn't quite feel relieved.

_Therapy._ He thought as he looked around his dark room at Grimmauld Place. He rolled over and prayed for a dreamless sleep.


End file.
